Fractional CGO · DTC · Wellness · Subscription
Hi, I'm Derin Oyekan.
Fractional Chief Growth Officer for founder-led consumer brands.
I was employee #1 at PrettyLitter, where we went from $0 to $40M ARR in under two years on the way to a $1.4B exit. I co-founded Reel Paper and led growth at Hiya Health. Now I embed with a small number of $5M+ subscription and DTC brands to find what's constraining growth, fix it, and build the system and team that scales.
Free for qualified brands at $5M+ in revenue.
Based in
Los Angeles
About
The operator behind the growth, not the consultant on the deck.
I'm Derin Oyekan, a founder, operator, and growth marketer who's spent over 20 years at the intersection of consumer brands and performance marketing.
I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. I've always been curious about how things work and how to make them better. That curiosity led me to a degree in electrical engineering, and it shaped how I think about building brands that actually matter. That's why I co-founded Reel Paper: to prove you could build a mission-driven CPG brand that competed on performance, not just purpose.
Before that, I was the first employee at PrettyLitter, where I helped build the growth engine that took the brand to a $1.4B exit. After Reel Paper, I joined Hiya Health as Chief Growth Officer, where I helped scale one of the fastest-growing kids' health brands in the country.
Across those companies and others, I've managed $500M+ in media spend and driven $2B+ in lifetime sales.
Today, I work fractionally with a small number of founder-led DTC brands at a time. Post product-market fit (PMF), subscription-first, $5M+ ARR. I own the full revenue system across acquisition, conversion, and retention, and I work closely with the founder. Not as a consultant. As the operator who's accountable for growth.
Selected Work
Case studies in subscription commerce, omnichannel, and lifecycle.
Subscription Commerce · Pet Wellness
PrettyLitter
Head of Growth, Employee #1
The challenge
PrettyLitter had a genuinely innovative product, but six months in, the business was stuck at $100K MRR, almost entirely one-time purchases, with no real subscription engine underneath. A performance agency was running paid as a black box. The deeper problem wasn't the agency. It was the model: transactional revenue in a commoditized category is a treadmill.
What I did
I joined as the first growth hire and made the foundational call: I'd build a subscription business deliberately, even if it meant slower top-line growth. I took back acquisition strategy, rebuilt the funnel around subscription conversion, and invested in the lifecycle, loyalty, and reactivation infrastructure that makes the unit economics work at scale. I turned down easy one-time revenue to protect subscriber quality.
Acquired by Mars Petcare for approximately $1.4B, built on a subscription model that didn't exist when I started.
Consumer Goods · Sustainable Essentials
Reel Paper
Co-Founder & CMO
The challenge
Sustainable paper is a category littered with brands that never escape the DTC bubble: high CAC, low reorder, a hard ceiling on growth. Reel Paper's ambition was different: build a truly omnichannel brand competing across DTC, Amazon, and big-box retail simultaneously. Most brands fail at this because each channel has its own logic, margin structure, and consumer behavior.
What I did
As co-founder and CMO, I built the team and owned the P&L from day one. I architected a customer lifecycle engine that operated differently across channels (acquiring on DTC, building basket size on Amazon, driving trial at Target) while maintaining a coherent brand voice. It required internal systems and external partnerships that could handle the operational complexity without losing commercial focus.
Featured in Forbes for disrupting the toilet paper category.
Health & Wellness · Baby Supplements
EllaOla
Growth Strategist
The challenge
EllaOla was already a real business at $1M ARR, but had plateaued. The founders had product conviction and a loyal early base, but the growth infrastructure wasn't built to scale. Agency relationships were fragmented, retention strategy was missing, and subscription unit economics weren't pointing toward profitability.
What I did
Working directly with the two founders, I overhauled the GTM from the top down. Brought coherence to a fragmented agency ecosystem, aligning paid media, retention, and creative so they pulled in the same direction. The focus on second-order profitability shaped every decision: optimize for subscribers who would stay, not just convert.
Health & Wellness · Children's Nutrition
Hiya Health
Fractional CMO
The challenge
Hiya had strong product-market fit and a fast-growing customer base, but was leaving significant revenue on the table. No email marketing program, no loyalty infrastructure, and a growing roster of agency partners that lacked coordination. At their pace, the cost of those gaps was compounding. They didn't need more acquisition spend. They needed more value from the customers they were already winning.
What I did
Coming in as fractional CMO alongside the founding team, I focused on high-leverage infrastructure the business simply didn't have yet. I designed and launched email marketing and loyalty programs from the ground up, built around the specific behavior patterns of Hiya's customer base, not generic DTC templates. I restructured agency relationships with clearer briefs, accountability metrics, and communication rhythms.
What founders say
"Working with Derin has been a great experience and super helpful for our business. His expertise made a huge impact on our growth and helped us hit key milestones faster than we expected."
"His deep industry knowledge, extensive network, and strategic insights have helped us navigate critical growth moments with confidence. He simplifies complex challenges and unlocks new opportunities."
"Derin thinks like an owner, not a consultant. He got into our numbers, found the leaks and gave us a plan we could run the next morning."
Featured
Press & media
"How one entrepreneur trusted his gut and disrupted the toilet paper business."
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Read the Rescue a CEO articleFAQ
Questions founders actually ask.
The questions founders ask most before I start. If yours isn't here, send a note and I'll answer directly.
Find theconstraint.Fix it.Build the system that scales.
I work with a small number of brands at a time.
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